Tag: high availability

This is part two of one of how to setup the mother of all database clustering solutions for SharePoint. In part one we setup the failover cluster, installed SQL Server and configured the failover clusters. Previously we’d setup our super-cluster & installed SQL Server, this time with two failover clusters; one for each farm. Now…

When I demonstrated AlwaysOn for SharePoint Disaster Recovery setups a while ago, the SQL cluster model I setup wasn’t strictly speaking highly-available. This is because there’s no failover for SQL Servers synchronising data between both SharePoint farms. A couple of people have pointed this out now and as this is technically a potential fault, I…

Just a quick clarification on terminology & methodologies for SharePoint “disaster recovery” (DR). In case you didn’t know already, multiple SharePoint farms can be run sharing the same content data, which is very handy if you need near 100% uptime for your SharePoint sites & apps. If for any reason your primary farm dies, you…

Alternative title: “how do I get a redundant SQL backend combined with a disaster recovery site, using AlwaysOn”? This is a question that has come up a bit just recently so I though I’d clarify how this can work. Arranging the SQL Server AlwaysOn setup for SharePoint, especially when a contingency/disaster-recovery farm is involved alongside using…

So you’ve heard about the possibility of running two SharePoint farms in parallel to help keep SharePoint users happily online longer, and you want some more information about how it works and why you’d want it. This one is a nice and quick post on just the basics to sell the idea a bit -…

…or perhaps better titled, “why you really shouldn’t consider using snapshots with SharePoint (but fine, if you insist…)”. A common question that comes up for SharePoint is how to snapshot/rollback virtualised SharePoint farms, often inspired by worried admins having to install updates to the farm looking for a contingency plan. Unless you’re crystal-clear on how…

As highlighted in a previous post, it is perfectly possible to patch SharePoint without suffering any downtime at all if you have x2 SharePoint farms to play with. This is great if you’re worried about the update process taking either too long for a maintenance window or not completing at all (initially). Edit: here’s some important…

A keyword that’s often thrown around when discussing SharePoint architecture is “clustering”. The problem is that it’s often not very clear what it means in the context of SharePoint, so here’s a quick article on what this might possibly mean so we can all be on the same page when we talk about this term…

Many people have asked about how to cleanly restart an AppFabric server so data in the cache isn’t lost and may have even found they’ve not been able to get it to work themselves. It’s a good question; I hope to answer how here to some extent, partly because the official commands don’t actually work…

Small but significant update; earlier I described a problem where SharePoint can get its’ knickers in a twist when it comes to consuming a SQL Server endpoint that exists in multiple clusters. Well the problem is real enough; anyone with this configuration that has a failover will probably find SharePoint mysteriously unable to connect to…